Army Detains Ahmed Miqati's Assistant, Suspect Linked to 2013 Iranian Embassy Bombing
The Lebanese army detained earlier this week prominent suspects linked to security incidents that have taken place in Lebanon in recent months, reported the daily al-Mustaqbal on Sunday.
A military source told the daily that the army had arrested on Tuesday the assistant of terror detainee Ahmed Salim Miqati in the northern city of Tripoli.
It described the arrest as an “important catch in the army's battle with terrorism.”
The detainee, who was not identified, was arrested on the same day that Lebanon signed a military grant from Saudi Arabia and France to the Lebanese army.
Miqati, a terror detainee, confessed during investigations that his group aimed at carrying out a wide-scale assault against the army, revealing that fugitive Salafist cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Asir is taking the Palestinian refugee camp Ain al-Hilweh, near the southern city of Sidon, as his refuge.
The army has come under growing attacks across Lebanon by militants who accuse it of colluding with Hizbullah in its intervention in the Syrian conflict on the side of the regime.
On Saturday, the army had arrested in the southern region of Sidon a suspect linked to the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Nusra Front, added al-Mustaqbal
He confessed to being linked to the group and Moein Abu Dahr, one of the suicide bombers who carried out the attack against the Iranian embassy in Beirut in 2013.
At least 23 people were killed and more than 145 others were wounded in a twin suicide blast that took place in November 2013 near the embassy in the neighborhood of Bir Hassan in Beirut's southern suburbs.
A security official said the first suicide attacker was on a motorcycle that carried two kilograms of explosives. He blew himself up at the large black main gate of the Iranian mission, damaging the three-story facility.
Less than two minutes later, the second suicide attacker driving a car rigged with 50 kilograms of explosives struck about 10 meters away, the official said.
An al-Qaida-linked group, the Lebanese Abdullah Azzam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack. It said it was payback for the military support that Iran and Hizbullah provide against the mainly Sunni rebels fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
M.T.
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